When my parents and I were praying to God, I thought they were saying:

"Our father who does art in heaven, Harold be thy name, thy kingdom come, I will be done with dressings made in heaven. Give us our jelly bread and forgive us our trash baskets and forgive us who put trash bags among us. Lead us not into Penn Station but deliver us some e-mail."

Anon

When I was little I used to believe that the phrase "delivers us from evil" referred to God putting the entire human race into a big yellow envelope and sending us away somewhere evil couldn't reach us.

digital dragon

A four year old friend of mine was very proud to have learned the "our father" at church, and so she was reciting it to me. She ended it with "lead us not into temptation, but deliver us with evil."

Well, i dont know what god SHE's praying to....

Chris-Mass.

that I could throw my problems up in the sky and God would reach down and catch them.

DeQuendre

As a young Catholic child, I knew I needed to bless myself with the sign of the cross before and after my prayers. For some reason I believed the before-prayers sign of the cross got God on the line (like a telephone call) and the after-prayers one hung up the phone. I'd lie in bed wondering if God was still "on the line." I thought that until I was 17!

Anne Oljar

...and, of course, I always believed that we asked God, in the Lord's Prayer, to "lead a snot into temptation."

David Moreau

I used to think that 'Grace' at the table went: Gone is Great! Gone is Good! Let us spank him for our food. Amen...

Drake Healy

When I was little I used to think that if I didn't do the sign of the cross before praying God would not listen to me, so when I would forget to do it I would start praying all over again even if I was almost finished.

Josie

I used to believe that prayers were like phoning God ie when you made the sign of the cross it was like dialling the number and after you said your prayer you HAD to do the sign of the cross to hang up or God would still be able to read your mind and he'd know if you were doing or thinking anything bad. I also believed that if you were interrupted during your prayer you would have to stop and make the sign of the cross to hang up and THEN you could attend to the interruption. I was about eight years old when I started to doubt this belief but then one day we were saying prayers in class (Catholic school) and the teacher made us do do sign of the cross but then another teacher came in and our teacher just stopped. My friend leaned over and whispered to me and said "Be good, God can still hear us because we didn't hang up". Thus my unusual belief was reaffirmed for another year.

Norah-Ireland

When I was in Kindergarden, the first Gulf War broke out. I didn't understand war, but I picked up enough to know that the Americans were fighting Saddam Hussein. One day my mom told me to pray for my enimies. That night, my prayers included "...and please let Saddam Hussein be blown to smiterines!"

bjc

I used to believe that if you opened your eyes while praying, that for however long you had your eyes opened, you had to keep your eyes closed for that much longer after the prayer was finished. So i started closing just one eye, and the other eye that i kept opened would see who else would need to keep their eyes closed after the prayer

Kelsey

when i was little, i thought your prayers would come out of these machines (just like fax machines) and that God would sit in the clouds read them all day.

jenny

when i was little i thought that when they say "thanks be to god" they were saying "thanks peter god" so i thought that the lady who always said that was named peter, and i wondered why she had a boys name.

Emily

I never did understand why it was "Our Father, who aren't in heaven".

Edith

I was raised a catholic and went to a catholic school but I was well into my teens before I could stop saying 'Hell Mary, full of grace etc'...

Buzz